ELON Musk is possibly THE richest billionaire on Earth, certainly one of the richest. This isn’t an “achievement” to be proud of. Musk was born to an extremely rich family in South Africa, 20 years before the end of apartheid. Their wealth came from property speculation and emerald mines. Raised in that privileged environment, privilege was something that Musk just took for granted as being “normal”.
He now owns Twitter, which he has renamed as X. On that propaganda outlet Musk is himself a frequent flyer, with millions of followers who lap up the richest man on Earth telling them that their problems are not down to capitalism, but to immigrants, mainly Muslim ones, not the obscenely rich like himself.
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It’s obvious to me that Elon Musk is an enemy of the working class.
He has now picked a fight with a Member of the Scottish Parliament, Humza Yousaf. Whatever criticisms I might have had of Yousaf when he was first minister of Scotland, I say all Scots should show solidarity with our compatriot over this. Musk has falsely accused Yousaf of being racially opposed to everybody that is “white”. Making this totally ridiculous false accusation is, in effect, painting a target on Yousaf’s back for Musk’s millions of thick, prejudiced followers to take aim at.
Yousaf is said to be considering legal action for defamation against Musk. Taking legal action against the richest man on the planet, who can buy thousands of lawyers, is maybe not the best way of dealing with this. Personally, if Elon Musk were to defame me I would be inclined to challenge him to a real fight.
What’s that you say? You think I would lose? Okay, so I’m an 83-year-old disabled veteran; it’s quite possible I could get battered. The odds would be heavily in his favour. Mind you, if I did get battered, in front of a Scottish crowd, folk might not like that. It could be poetic justice if this man who, from his ivory tower, promotes mob violence, were himself to become victim of an angry crowd.
Dave Coull
Findowrie
AT this moment there are many worldwide issues and challenges that are both worrying and anger-inducing.
Add Elon Musk and his disdainful attitude towards our previous FM Humza Yousaf into the mix and you realise the arrogance and hypocrisy of these billionaires knows no bounds.
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Musk is a dangerous man, part of a closed clique of billionaires who want to continually increase their bank balances while controlling the world. They thrive on the chaos around the world – it suits them to keep us all confused and poor.
We need to support Humza Yousaf and our fellow citizens in standing tall against the megalomaniacs.
Jan Ferrie
Ayrshire
UNTIL we take the power to run our own country we will continue to suffer the indignity on the world stage of England simply robbing us of all the resources that should be used for the benefit of the Scottish people.
It is very apparent that England will never give us independence because they are reliant on so much of Scotland’s resources. It is also very clear that they have no intention of paying the Scottish people for the resources they use. Norway gains revenue from every barrel of oil and retains a stake in the operation that allows a level of control, whereas the oil resource of Scotland was given to the oil companies at a knockdown price and has never generated the revenue that should be in the Scottish exchequer.
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The same will happen to the renewable energy, the concessions given to private industry will not allow the owners of the resource to gain its true value and indeed the people of Scotland will be penalised, under the present structure, for being on the periphery of the grid whereas the central generation point in the grid will be Scotland and London will be on the periphery. The people of London will never pay a surcharge for the delivery of energy under current regulation.
It is time to get serious about taking the decisions to re-establish our status as a nation in the international arena and tell England that they will no longer get free access to our resources. There is no reason why an amicable trading relationship cannot then be negotiated to supply electricity and fossil fuel to England at world market rates with the revenue going to Scotland and the people of Scotland benefitting in the same way as any another sovereign nation that has resource to sell. It is time to act.
David Neilson
Dumfries
ANNE Glen ends her excellent letter exposing the reality of freeports (Aug 14) by saying “democracy no more, but then maybe that’s the plan”. There is no maybe about it. Proponents of freeports and economic development zones from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel have been open about their belief that “economic freedom” is far more important than democracy.
Friedman said in 1988 that he believed “a democratic society, once established, destroys a free economy”. His inspiration was Hong Kong, where “economic freedom” took precedence over political freedom, and in his workshops advocating the economic freedom of the world we were told that such things such as the “right” to food, clothing, medical services, housing or a minimum income level were “forced labour” requirements, that redistribution was ‘slave labour’ and that taxation was theft, pure and simple.
What economic freedom means in practice is the licence for a few to exploit the many and to have unrestricted access to the resources of the world.
It has led to the huge widening of inequality and to the lack of meaningful action on tackling climate change, the two greatest problems facing humankind.
Andrew M Fraser
Inverness
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